The World Gives Way: A Novel Read online

  “Simpson has a point,” Barnes said.

  Tobias shook his head, then realized that Barnes wouldn’t have registered the gesture. He pressed on.

  “Troy’s a tech hub. Most of the other towns on this side of the coast are. She’s smart enough to avoid surveillance. Kittimer’s so old-fashioned, you barely get a network signal.”

  He didn’t say it, but he also knew that Myrra was looking for a place that would feel reassuring. He had seen the lights of Kittimer as a kid, when he was dragged along on a yacht party with David. The mountains’ warm colorful light, like a cozy lit cabin on a cold night. As a person who believed she was waiting for the apocalypse, she’d follow that kind of warmth and comfort.

  He also didn’t say that she believed the world was ending. For some reason he couldn’t bring himself to share that fact, even though it might have helped his case to clue them into her state of mind. He didn’t want to say the words out loud. He mostly kept himself from wondering why.

  A heavy sigh muddled the sound in their earpieces. Barnes always put his face too close to the speaker. He was used to the earlier generations of tech, with lower volume and more static.

  “That’s still not much to go on,” Barnes said. “What—”

  The feed cut out, and the screen went black. One moment Tobias could hear the background noises of the New London headquarters, and the next there was silence. Tobias picked up the tablet and started tapping at the screen.

  “It got disconnected,” he said, looking up at Simpson. Simpson looked as if he was about to smash the tablet over his head.

  “No shit,” Simpson replied. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  He knew it was selfish, and he knew he was making Simpson furious, but he had to keep going anyhow.

  “We need to stay on this,” he pleaded.

  “Why? We blew it. Emerson’s capable—it won’t take him too long to find her with the notes we give him. I would like to see my wife and kids. Don’t you want to see Barnes? Make sure he’s OK?”

  “I can’t. I can’t go back to Barnes with this thing half-finished, he’ll never look at me the same way again.” Tobias looked down at his feet, counted to five. He didn’t want to sound too aggressive, but there was an anger rising in him, at all the pushback he’d received every step of the way, when all he’d ever tried to do was a job well done.

  “You don’t get it,” he continued, not looking up. “This is my one shot. I won’t get another one. If I screw this up, everyone will either assume I’m an idiot criminal, or they’ll assume I’m an idiot that Barnes just patronized.”

  Simpson let out a slow whistling breath. Tobias could tell he was trying to find the right words, ones that wouldn’t be insulting.

  “Look, Bendel, it’s not your fault. This one is weird. Usually we have someone in custody within a week.” He paused. “I don’t even think her getting away was really your fault.”

  Tobias looked at him, trying to read his face. He wanted to believe him. He couldn’t tell if Simpson was telling him the truth or telling him what he wanted to hear.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Nobody will give me the benefit of the doubt. Barnes was the only one who ever did.”

  Now it was Simpson’s turn to look away. He looked a little manic, his eyes shining and darting around, as if he were searching for an exit.

  “I want to get out of here,” he told Tobias. It sounded like a religious confession. “Ever since the earthquake, something doesn’t feel right. I want to get back to my kids. I think it might calm me down.”

  Tobias almost gave in at that. If he weren’t so selfish, maybe he would have. Instead he asked, practically begged, “Can we just try Kittimer? If we don’t find her there, then we can go home.”

  Simpson scratched at the back of his head with one hand, still looking around, not quite meeting Tobias’s eyes.

  “One week,” Simpson said. Tobias could have hugged him, but settled for a handshake. Same as Barnes.

  And Simpson backed him once they got Barnes back on the line.

  “Sorry—” Barnes started. “Connection’s been on the fritz ever since the quake. We’ve got IT working on it…”

  Simpson cut in, his voice reluctant at first, but decisive. “Listen, I think the kid’s got a good instinct on this one. It’ll be worth it to check Kittimer for a few days. If nothing comes of it, then we’ll come home. That work for you, sir?”

  Barnes sounded surprised, but acquiesced. Tobias nearly melted from gratitude.

  A lot of it had to do with his career, he knew that. He couldn’t fathom leaving a case halfway through, like leaving a kitchen spill halfway cleaned, with the soggy rag still crumpled in a puddle on the counter.

  But there was a feeling of possession there too. He knew Myrra Dal, and he wanted to finish the path they had started. He wanted to hear more of what she had to say. He still had questions.

  These were things he didn’t feel like sharing with Simpson. He was already having too much trouble being taken seriously.

  They went back to their corner of the Nabat jail cell. Tobias waited his turn in line at the bathroom, then stood in front of the mirror and dutifully checked his head wound to note how it was healing. There were still spots of bleeding here and there, and the stitches were messy—the hospitals were overrun after Palmer. There would almost certainly be a scar. His first, come to think of it, at least where scars on the skin were concerned.

  23

  MYRRA

  Rachel wanted to take Myrra to see the dervishes.

  “I know you’re not really here for a pilgrimage, but you don’t have to be religious to enjoy it.” Myrra gave her a skeptical look, but Rachel just doubled down on her suggestion. “I haven’t had a chance to see the dervishes in months, come on—” She grabbed Myrra’s wrist and tugged at it with both hands, like a small child pulling a parent toward an ice cream shop. Her energy was infectious.

  Myrra thought they would be able to walk to the temple, but once they got to the corner Rachel flagged down a cab. Myrra peered in the back seat, wary of cameras. She couldn’t find any and reluctantly climbed in.

  “The best Sama ceremonies are a couple peaks over,” Rachel explained, once they were all shoved together in the back seat. “Anything you find in our section is strictly for tourists… not authentic at all.” Myrra liked the way Rachel leaned in and talked conspiratorially about this or that; it felt good to be someone’s friend.

  “Where are we going?” Annie asked.

  “We’re going to see the spinning men,” Rachel told her. Annie hunched her shoulders in disdain. Myrra, who was nestled next to her with Charlotte on her lap, felt Annie’s bony shoulders poke against her arms as she moved.

  “No,” Annie said, with authoritarian force. “We’re going to go home. Take me home.”

  “We’ll go home, right after this stop,” Rachel replied, using a singsong voice usually reserved for children. “But Charlotte really, really wanted to see the dervishes; you don’t want Charlotte to miss out, do you?”

  This seemed to distract Annie. Myrra felt her frail body relax as the old woman turned and crooked a finger at Charlotte’s face.

  “Charlotte,” she murmured. “Hello, sweetie, sweetheart… sweet Gracie girl.”

  Myrra pulled Charlotte back a little from Annie’s looming finger. She didn’t appreciate Rachel foisting Charlotte on Annie like some sort of toy. The taxi sped across the first tall bridge, where Myrra had helped Charlotte stand, then barreled downhill around the opposite peak. Trees, snowdrifts, rocks, towers, windows, and the occasional minaret all whooshed past Myrra’s window view. Soon they were crossing another, lower bridge toward a third mountain peak, this one even deeper into the range. The taxi climbed again, making hairpin turns as it worked its way up the slope.

  The cab stopped on a street that featured multiple mosques and synagogues. A sign next to their chosen temple advertised vodun fetishes that contained kosher and h
alal animal bones. Shrines made to order.

  Rachel got out first and retrieved the walker and stroller from the trunk. She pulled a card out of Annie’s purse and handed it to the cabbie.

  Rachel beckoned to them to follow. “Come on, it’s starting.”

  They walked into a large circular room, with seating for spectators in a ring around the outside. A small half wall of stone separated the audience from the main floor space. It was crowded, but with a little searching they found a few seats right up against the barrier. Myrra craned her neck up to see the dome above them and gripped Charlotte tighter on her lap. It felt as though her body were falling in space. The dome was composed entirely of metal and stained glass laid out in a mesmerizing geometric pattern, triangles, squares, and rectangles projecting bright rays of orange, yellow, red, and purple. She closed her eyes and could still feel her skin bathed in the color.

  “Here they come,” Rachel said, tugging on the fabric of her sleeve.

  Myrra lowered her head to take in the room at eye level. A processional of figures in black robes and tall brown hats entered the center circle. She looked to her left at Rachel, who had her eyes fixed on them with rapt attention. Beyond her sat Annie, a little less interested. Charlotte sat on her lap sucking on her new pacifier, more entranced by the colorful ceiling above than by the people marching slowly in front of them.

  The robed figures walked slowly and deliberately around the circle, bowing to each other at intervals. Somewhere a person had started singing an unearthly warbling song. Then one by one they shed their black robes to reveal white ones underneath. Charlotte reached forward, trying to touch the dervishes, but Myrra kept a tight grip on her.

  “I guess the colors have different meanings for different sects, but I was always told that the white robes are meant to symbolize death, and the black robes are meant to symbolize a grave, and their hats are supposed to symbolize tombstones,” Rachel whispered to her matter-of-factly.

  “So it’s a funeral procession?”

  “No, they’re trying to bring themselves closer to God.”

  The dervishes began to spin in place, allowing the momentum to unfurl their arms upward like flower petals toward the sun. The edges of their robes likewise billowed out in undulating waves. They lifted their faces toward the light of the dome, arms raised, and spun and spun till it seemed impossible that they were still standing. The light filtering down through the stained glass lit each figure with electric color.

  The whole ritual was beautiful and hypnotic, but Myrra couldn’t help feeling like an intruder who had walked in on something deeply personal and intimate. She looked over at Rachel. Her face was rapturous. There were tears in her eyes. It must be different to watch such a ceremony when you believed in it.

  Religion was rampant among contract workers. She remembered the dorm in the factory, with an idol tacked above the head of each cot. Crosses, stars, little plastic cards with tiny painted deities. She remembered her mother’s small blue figure, a man with a placid face and many arms. She kept it hidden in her pocket, would show it to Myrra as she tucked her in at night and say, “He protects the universe. He protects all of us.”

  As Myrra grew older, her mother’s talks of religion grew more frequent. She would talk on and on about the wandering cycle of rebirth and redeath, and of the moral weight surrounding their every action. Near the end, it seemed every decision was something Myrra’s mother weighed as if it were going to make or break their lives. She talked about their lives to come, after this one.

  “We work hard, and we will be rewarded,” she was known to repeat.

  And later: “I work hard, and I will be rewarded.”

  It wasn’t a religion anymore, not the way the others practiced it. She was picking out pieces of it, here and there, to suit her own logic. It was something broken and wrong. Myrra felt her mother slipping away from her by degrees.

  Then there was the morning that Myrra woke up and her mother was not in their bed. The factory bosses told her that she had gotten sick and had to be taken to the hospital. When she didn’t come back, Myrra briefly believed that her mother had done it, she had escaped that terrible wheel. She pictured her not dying, but receding into particles of light.

  Now, with the benefit of age and hindsight, she knew different. Her beliefs had not saved her. Myrra didn’t know where her mother was, but wherever she had gone, she hadn’t bothered to take her daughter with her.

  Myrra stared at the colorful bodies whirling in circles, faster and faster, and felt isolation instead of communion. It was an incredibly beautiful thing to witness, but it was not a source of solace against what was to come. She pictured the dome shattering and shards of glass floating upward. She imagined the dervishes lifting off the ground and spinning up and up, their faces terrified by the light above them.

  Rachel waited until they were out of the temple to ask Myrra how she’d liked the show, and Myrra said with all honesty that it had been a beautiful display. Rachel was radiant; the tears on her cheeks had only halfway dried.

  “It’s been too long since I’ve visited this place,” Rachel said, pressing the backs of her fingers against her face in an attempt to cool the blush on her cheeks. “I wish I could come every week.”

  “What stops you?” Myrra asked in a distracted way. She was half-focused on Rachel and half-focused on Charlotte, who was making a game of spitting her pacifier out into the basket of the stroller and then crying until Myrra retrieved it for her. Annie walked beside the stroller and cackled every time Charlotte spit it out again.

  “Annie usually doesn’t let me,” Rachel replied. “She usually insists that I go to Mass with her.”

  Myrra, who was still bent over the stroller on a pacifier search, heard Rachel stop short at the last statement, as if she were trying to suck the words back into her lungs. And then she understood, instinctively, why.

  Rachel was under contract.

  She had managed to twist the situation to her advantage, but she was still technically owned by the senile woman shuffling along beside the stroller.

  Immediately Rachel shifted in Myrra’s esteem from a casual friend to a subject of great curiosity. She was the most lively and outgoing contract worker that Myrra had ever met. Had she always been that way, or had she evolved into a bolder person as Annie’s health deteriorated? How long had she worked for Annie? Had she done anything to encourage Annie’s illness?

  She popped the pacifier back into Charlotte’s mouth and rose to look at Rachel. Her mouth was parted a little, as if she were about to say something more. She looked like a video on pause. She knew she had said too much. She knew that Myrra had caught it.

  Myrra stuffed down her curiosity for the moment and smiled at her. She kept her tone conversational.

  “Well, I’ve never been to a Catholic Mass before, but that”—Myrra gestured back toward the temple—“was incredible.”

  Myrra saw Rachel’s face and shoulders relax. Her eyes darted over Myrra’s shoulder, and she took off in a run.

  “I see a cab!” she shouted back. “Come on!”

  Myrra took off after her, trying to maneuver the stroller as gracefully as possible, and also looking behind her to ensure that they weren’t about to leave Annie behind. The old woman followed as fast as she could, the feet of her walker clacking furiously against the cement sidewalk.

  “Where are we going now?” she cried out.

  The next day, Myrra bought a bottle of wine and waited until nightfall. She yearned to hear about Rachel’s experience; would there be emotions there to mirror her own? And a deeper wish was buried under this surface curiosity, one Myrra tried not to think about, a wish for someone to tell her story to, someone who might understand her own point of view. It was a dangerous temptation, one Myrra’s logical brain told her to avoid.

  She caught Rachel just as she was leaving Annie’s room, after Myrra knew the old woman would be asleep.

  “Care to join me?” She held the bottle u
p in front of Rachel’s face with a smile. “I figure I owed you… You showed me some of Kittimer’s culture, but I still haven’t tried any genuine Kittimer wine. The guy at the store assured me it’s the best red in the region.”

  Rachel looked a little reluctant. It was possible she was still unsure of Myrra after her slipup the day before. Myrra waggled her eyebrows, almost flirtatious. Rachel relented and laughed.

  “Come on,” Myrra said, walking down the hall with the bottle. “Don’t make me drink alone.” She heard Rachel’s giggles and footsteps behind her.

  “Where’s the baby?” Rachel asked, half whispering. It was fairly late, and the hostel was full to capacity.

  “She’s just over here,” Myrra said back, keeping her voice low until they got to the kitchen. Charlotte had fallen asleep in her stroller after a long day walking around town. While Rachel grabbed a seat in one of the mismatched chairs in the kitchen, Myrra searched the cupboards for clean glasses. She found one clean water glass and a chipped mug. Pouring a generous amount of wine into the water glass first, she handed it to Rachel. Then she poured a slightly lesser amount into her own mug. She sat down across from Rachel and held up the mug.

  “Cheers,” she said. Rachel looked dubiously at their shoddy cups but touched her glass to the ceramic side of Myrra’s mug.

  “This hostel is terrible,” Rachel said, then took a long drink. Myrra sipped at her wine in turn. “When we first got here, we were staying in a fabulous hotel, up near the peak of the basilica? It was incredible. Silk sheets, gold handles on the doors. And the view! You could see the whole of the Palmer Sea from the window.”

  Rachel sighed. “But then Annie started getting even sicker, and her Catholic guilt kicked in, and she decided God was punishing her for having nice things.”

  Myrra laughed at Rachel’s delivery of this information: very matter-of-fact, with little seeming care for Annie’s health. But then, it was only fair. Annie certainly felt like a sympathetic case, here at the end of her life, all frail and confused. But only Rachel would know of Annie’s previous sins, from her younger years when she’d had the upper hand.